Travels With My Hat: A Lifetime on the Road. Christine Osborne
said as we bumped into a higgledy-piggledy settlement of wooden stalls and corrugated iron shops where flame trees on either side of the road were in flower. Wandering about while Fineberg bought petrol, I saw there was little for sale; corncobs, a few onions and bananas, cotton reels, safety pins and combs and although I was a new white face, no one paid me any attention. People here had the dazed look of the hungry, but not quite starving.
The Bonke family lived in Siskela, a small village outside Arba Minch. Mr Bonke was at work when we arrived, but Beru, the FPP interpreter, introduced me to his wife, Marmite. I wondered about her name. I’d encountered a Rothman and a Culture in Africa, but never anyone named after the dark-brown vegetarian spread.
Marmite was thrilled with the beaded bag I’d brought as a gift and, gripping my hands, she bowed almost to the ground. Sisay was hiding behind her skirts but called by Beru, he emerged shyly, eyes focused on his toes, and extended a grubby hand. He was a serious little fellow missing two front teeth. His head was shaved, except for a woollen topknot, and his belly, distended by worms, strained against a pair of grey shorts held up by string braces. Despite the heat, he was wearing a green woollen jumper bought out of sponsorship money received from CLEO.
SISAY BONKE, THE CHILD SPONSORED BY CLEO MAGAZINE 1975
‘He won’t take it off,’ said Marmite introducing her other children, eight-year-old Shyate and her runny-nosed younger brothers, Tamene and Berahun. In the family tukul, she pointed to another child who lay crying on a burlap mat.
‘I had him here.’ Picking him up, she offered a breast. ‘There is an old village woman who helps, but five is enough. I don’t want any more.’
‘Has she heard of birth control?’ I asked Beru.
‘My neighbours speak of something, but we don’t know what it is, or where to find it,’ she told him.
A cane partition in the tukul divided the cooking, living and sleeping areas. Marmite’s utensils were arranged neatly along a log: a large enamel bowl, a small enamel plate, three glasses, a wooden spoon and a chipped cup and saucer. Bean gourds, corncobs and a bag for carrying injera hung from the beams and two earthenware jars stood against the wall—fetching water was also a woman’s chore.
Asked what they ate, Marmite whispered that they’d never eaten wat.
‘They’ve never eaten meat,’ explained Beru, who was wearing a navy suit and tie for the occasion. ‘And they’ve never drunk tea or coffee. Even milk is a luxury they can’t afford.’
Before coming to Ethiopia, I’d planned on taking the Bonke family out to dinner, but while well-meant, the idea was preposterous. There was nowhere to eat in Arba Minch and instead, the Bonkes invited me to share their supper, and while concerned as to whether I would enjoy the experience, Fineberg finally left me with Beru.
Helped by Sisay and Shyate, at sunset Marmite rounded up their animals and lit a rusty hurricane lamp. At seven o’clock, Mr Bonke returned from a day building roads in Gemu Gofu province of which Arba Minch was the regional town.
‘Ten hours a day, six days a week for thirty dollars a month,’ he said wearily. ‘Without help from this CLEO person, I don’t know how we’d manage.’
We were now fifteen squeezed inside the tukul since Bonke’s seven goats—including a rank-smelling, billygoat standing beside me—had staked out places for the night. And tonight, just as they did yesterday and would do so again tomorrow, the Bonke family was eating corn.
Marmite uncovered a bowl of eight uncooked patties she had mashed with water and squeezed into lumps, with haleko leaves—a sort of spinach—draped across them. The thought that mother would be horrified to learn I was eating uncooked food mixed with river-water crossed my mind. Fiddling with my portion, I managed to swallow a mouthful, or two. Its taste was negligible and the texture was like plasticine, but I was glad to have eaten a little so as not to offend this poor Ethiopian family.
‘Is there something they might like to drink?’ I asked Beru, who was seated next to Mr Bonke on the only bed.
‘People here drink tella, a fermented corn beer,’ he replied. ‘I know Bonke loves it, but they’ve only had it twice in their lives.’
‘Tonight’s the night,’ I said, giving Sisay some coins to run and fetch some tella from a neighbour.
Bonke’s eyes lit up when he returned with a ketchup bottle filled with amber fluid. A glass was poured for me, but now obsessed with thoughts of guinea worm and dysentery, I declined as politely as was possible in the circumstances.
‘With one dollar I could start a small tella business and make a profit of two dollars a week,’ said Marmite, staring dreamily into the fire.
As contented snorts came from the animals, I stood up, a good head taller than both Beru and Bonke, and pressing the equivalent of a dollar in Marmite’s hand, I wished her luck with her enterprise.
‘She asks may she keep the plastic bags you’ve brought their presents in. They will be great for carrying her corn,’ said Beru courteously.
Back at Arba Minch’s timeworn hotel, I pictured Mrs Bonke walking about Siskela with Sainsburys12 carry bags. But I could not sleep. Stomach cramps sent me scurrying to the lavatory where I remained racked by diarrhoea and attacked by mosquitoes as big as bumblebees zooming in through a broken window. Back to bed for a bit. Then up again. Up. Down. All night long, but though utterly drained, next morning I accompanied Fineberg back to thank Marmite for her hospitality. She was at the river fetching water and having loaded her heavy jars into the Land Rover, we drove her back to the tukul.
‘Thank you,’ she smiled. ‘It has saved my back and I’ve never ridden in one of these things before.’
‘Goodbye Sisay,’ I told the little boy. ‘I hope you’ll do well at school.’
‘I’m not excited,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘But I think I would like to go.’ And he ran off surrounded by leaping, skipping children.
I had given the Bonke family powdered milk, rice and biscuits, but as in the Ogaden, I was troubled at not having enough for their neighbours. And everything considered, I even questioned the wisdom of raising one family’s living standards in the unstable political climate of Ethiopia.
Sure enough, between 1975 and 1991, the general situation deteriorated under the violent leadership of Mengistu who mounted a ‘Red Terror’ campaign against all opponents of his wretched regime.
‘Death to the counter-revolutionaries,’ he cried in 1976, and standing in the centre of Addis Ababa, he’d smashed bottles filled with pig blood to demonstrate the fate awaiting them. Students refusing to obey government orders were arrested, given a gun and sent to the front-line battle zone with Eritrea. State security forces tortured anyone suspected of belonging to opposition movements and thousands of ‘dissident’ peasants were killed, at which point CLEO lost contact with Master Sisay Bonke.
After leaving Siskela, Fineberg invited me for drinks with Father John Gannon, an Irish priest who’d spent twenty-five years in Africa and whose parish was now in Arba Minch. A great raconteur, the father was quick to tell me about a local tribe, the Gujis (pronounced just like the iconic Italian fashion label).
‘I recently took an Irish engineer out to survey possible dam sites,’ he said as we sat watching the sunset on his back verandah. ‘We were deep inside Guji Oromo territory when I mentioned their custom of presentin’ a severed penis to the bride on their wedding night. He got quite upset, so he did, but don’t worry Paddy, I told him. If the Gujis attack us, I’ll offer me own, seeing I sort of don’t need it like.’ Slapping his knee and roaring with laughter, he got up and poured us another belt of whisky as the significance of the necklace from Rada’s jewellery shop dawned on me.
‘But it seems so peaceful here Father, and your garden is